ABOUT
Dr Anna Johnson (they/she) lives and works in East London. They have recently completed their PhD in Creative Writing, at Kingston University, where they also teach Creative Writing.
Anna runs writing workshops and mentorships, including at Rupturexibit in South London.
They hold a first class BA(hons) in History and Theory of Art from the University of Kent, an MA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, and a PhD in Creative Writing from Kingston University.
Get in touch if you would like Anna to run a writing workshop at your space or event.
Contact: annaotheranna@gmail.com
My practice
In February 2016 I began to write about my experience of early motherhood; an experience of such unexpected, powerful, immersive strangeness that I needed to find some way of placing it at a little distance, of beginning to analyse it or maybe just trace it, through writing. This writing has grown into a full-blown life writing practice, centred on a recurring connection between my experience of motherhood and ideas of haunting, of presence and absence and repetition (daily and generational). Themes of trauma, grief and ageing are also explored in my more recent poetry.
The critical element of my PhD looked at how, through theories of the spectral, intersectionality, queerness, feminism, disability, failure and anecdote, amongst others, we might aspire to transform and re-possess language in an attempt to express the ineffable. After all, ghosts are one of our oldest and most familiar ways of speaking the unspeakable. There is failure inherent in the project, but I hope a valuable, generative kind of failure.
My work is also reflective of a complex intersectionality that I embrace as fundamental to life writing, and as such it encompasses issues including neurodiversity and chronic illness. I have published chapters on both these issues (see publications below).
Recent publications and events:
Forthcoming (2025): Motherhood: A Ghost Story, full-length poetic-prose work, published by Broken Sleep Books
2025: a ghost and sometime momentarily, sometimes for years, two poem-artworks created for the exhibition Sorry About the Mess, London, curated Millie Walton and hosted by Bow Arts
2024: Visceral Bodies Special issue of Studies in the Maternal Journal, Anna has co-edited this special issue, based on a symposium they co-organised in 2023. The issue also features Anna’s poem sometimes momentarily, sometimes for years
2024: Familiar, poem, in t’ART Magazine Winter online issue
2023: But Also Flesh and Salt, creative writing contribution to Motherlore Magazine (previously published in The Contemporary Journal)
2023: Some other register, poetry contribution to Dx: Diagnosis and Writing, dxandwriting.com
2023: Visceral Bodies Symposium, an interdisciplinary and cross-institution symposium organised by myself and fellow PhD student Anna Argiró at Kingston University, April 2023
2023: Creativity and Motherhood in Lockdown: An Ongoing Conversation, zine, co-authored with Lina Hakim, presented at the CAMC Conference, Coventry University
2022: 'Failure: the Ghost and the Mother', Alluvium Journal, Special Edition 10.1
2021: 'Failure: the Ghost and the Mother', talk at BACLS-WHN 2021 Virtual Conference
2021: 'An Intersection of Motherhood and Chronic Illness', chapter in From Band-Aids to Scalpels: Motherhood Experiences in/of Medicine, Demeter Press
2021: 'Cascading Transitions: Becoming a Writer and Engaging with Neurodiversity in Response to Motherhood', chapter in Women in Transition: Crossing Boundaries, Crossing Borders, Routledge
2021: Race/Gender Matters Research Group Event I curated: ‘Failure and Care’ with Lisa Baraitser, Kingston
2020: I so wanted to ask you… video piece, Writers’ Centre Kingston
2019: 'Illness/Parenting/Writing', performance, Writers’ Centre Kingston
2019: 'The Role of ‘Place’ in My Creative Life-Writing Practice', talk, Genos/Matter/Theory Conference, Kingston
2018: 'Cascading Transitions: Becoming a Writer and Engaging with Neurodiversity in Response to Motherhood', talk at Women in Transition Conference, Kings and Oxford
2018: 'Objects of a Maternal Haunting', chapter in Everyday World-Making: Towards an Understanding of Affect and Mothering, Demeter Press